The CJN Magazine Summer 2024

Am Yisrael Chai!

EVENING MIRACLES

What’s inside

Contributors

Daniel Sulzberg (c

Katherine Laidlaw (p 42) is a journalist whose feature stories include tales of a notorious romance scammer and a duplicitous money manager for Toronto Life, along with pieces in The Atlantic, Chatelaine, Outside, The Walrus and Wired. She’s currently a Torontobased writer at The Hustle, investigating quirky business stories like whether a girl really turned orange a er drinking Sunny Delight

Ralph Benmergui (p 16) is a veteran broadcaster and spiritual director who hosts the podcast Not That Kind of Rabbi from his home studio in Hamilton, Ont , and sometimes before an audience Previously, he did audio tours of Jewish Canadian communities on Yehupetzville for The CJN Podcast Network I Thought He Was Dead is the name of his memoir, published in 2021.

The Canadian Rac e Re lations Foundation is a Crown Corp oration c ommi tte d to f ighting rac ism in Canada. We work to strengthen the s o c ial fabric o f our s o c ie t y b y supp or ting , enabling and c onvening c ommuni t y group s and organi zations through our grant s , s er v ic e s and ne t work o f public , re s earch and c ommuni t y par tners .

We supp or t c ommunities through funding pro je c ts and e vents

• O ver the past t wo years , the CR R F supp or te d the p ower ful anti-rac ism work o f more than 30 0 organi zations acro s s Canada wi th just over $5 million.

We help municipalities de velop anti-racism pro grams

• Work ing wi th munic ipali tie s to supp or t b e st prac tic e s to addre s s rac ism lo call y

• Widening ac c e s s to public s er v ic e for fu ture generations wi th fe llowship s for rac iali ze d you th

We ele vate public dis c ours e through par tnership s and e du cation

• Ho sting public we b inars to increas e awarene s s o f emerging is sue s

• Re s earching rac iali ze d c ommuni tie s ’ experiences of racism, hate , and discrimination

We move public p olic y

• Co - chairing a National Task Forc e on Hate Crime s to create Canada-wide standards

• Conne c ting wi th c ommuni tie s to b e tter understand issues related to racism in Canada

• Prov iding p olic y re c ommendations to government on anti-rac ism ini tiati ve s

L e a rn m o re a b o u t

o u r wo rk a n d h ow we c a n we ave a

stro n g , e q u i ta b l e

Ca nada to g e th e r

The Canadian Race Relations Foundation is a Crown Corp oration b orn from the Japane se Canadian Re dre s s A gre ement and now par t o f the Depar tment o f Canadian Heritage , G overnment o f Canada.

Summer greetings from CEO Michael Weisdorf

There’s something truly magical about the star t of summer in Canada

The days are longer, the nights are warmer, and it comes with an unmistakable buzz of anticipation as families, friends, neighbours and strangers come together for BBQs, concer ts, spor ting events and street par ties And nothing resonates like a festival that blends music, ar t and culture in one lively space

With a thousand or more of these events scheduled acros s Canada between May and October, you’re likely just a shor t commute from seeing stages come alive, food stalls tempting your taste buds, and the excitement of a roaring midway

Whether it’s the Toronto C aribbean C arnival or the C algar y S tampede drawing hundreds of thous ands of visitor s, or smaller communit y events like the Bathur s t Hospitalit y Days in New Brunswick or Dauphin’s C ountr yfe s t in Manitoba, ever yone is drawn together with a sense of camaraderie no mat ter who they are or where they ’re from

B u t a s we h e a d i n to a h o p ef u l l y

social distancing rules that curbed many celebrations for two years Six months into my perch at this publication, I’m obser ving a lot of ignorance and generalizations, along with the condemnation of anyone who doesn’t share their views

My h o p e fo r t h i s s u m m e r

s p e c t a cu l a r s e a s o n , I a l s o p a u s e to ref l e c t o n h ow t h e wo r l d h a s ch a nge d

s i n c e O c t 7 T h e t rage d y t h at s p a r ke d a wo r l dwi d e wave o f a n t i s e m i t i s m b ega n

j u s t o u t s i d e K i b b u t z Re’ i m i n I s ra el, at t h e Nova M u s i c Fe s t i va l, w h i ch wa s b i l l e d a s a “c el eb rat i o n o f f r i e n d s , l ove a n d

i n f i n i te f re e d o m ”

I imagine how, when the event kicked of f on Oct 6, festival- goers were feeling the sense of excitement, happines s and wonderment that comes with being among thousands of others feeling the same way It’s a familiar feeling to all of us I also think of how the lives of those young people who were full of life and hope for the future were unimaginably and horrifically changed forever

The rest of the Jewish communit y has also felt the reverberations ever since, watching the world go down a rabbit hole of hate and ignorance on the heels of pandemic lockdowns, travel restrictions, and

Maybe you find your summer time blis s at a cot tage or campground, maybe it involves an overseas flight or hit ting the highway nearby. Maybe it’s as simple as reading on a beach or catching up with friends on a patio. No mat ter what you do, remember to cherish each moment, and embrace joy however you can.

MICHAEL WEISDORF, MBA Chief Executive Officer

T he Canadian Jewish News

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Bryan Borzykowski President

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Conquering cancellation

How an uninvited series of Barbie and Ken photo tableaux led Vancouver artist Dina Goldstein to confront antisemitism

B Y S A M M A R G O L I S

“ It was a show about toys There was no reason to remove me because of the context of the work It was not a platform for a conversation about the war ”

Dina Goldstein, a Canadian photographer born in Tel Aviv, is talking about how her work was pulled from Toy Stor y The thematic group exhibition was scheduled from May 9 to June 29 at the Center of International Contemporar y Ar t (CICA) in Vancouver the city where her family moved in 1975, when she was five years old, and where she still lives today Moving out on her own to the bohemian neighbourhood of Gastown inspired her to pursue a creative career

“In the ar t world it was accepted and required that you need to have your own voice,” Goldstein told The CJN in the wake o being told her work wasn’t welcome by CICA in late April “N are tr ying to shut down those voices for no reason ”

have your own voice,” Goldstein told The CJN in the wake of her told her work wasn’t welcome CICA in late April. “Now they

The photographs kept from display are a series of tableaux from 2012 Barbie and Ken, over a decade before the blond In Dollhouse is a satire of situations in domestic life, sometimes with a risqué approach to social commentary. Musée in Paris requested to include one of its in its Frida Khalo and Rivera Self-Portrait

The photographs kept from display are a series of tableau 2012 involving Barbie and Ken, over a decade before the b characters were reborn as Hollywood icons In the Dollhous a satire of situations in domestic life, sometimes with a risq approach to social commentar y. Musée d’Orsay in Paris req to include one of its images in its Frida Khalo and Diego Riv catalogue: “Haircut” was directly inspired by Khalo’s Self-Po with Cropped Hair

But in the heated discus sions surrounding the removal of by an Israeli-born ar tist at a Vancouver galler y, which she c was due to voicing suppor t for her homeland, many were un

But in the heated discussions the removal of works an Israeli-born artist at a Vancouver gallery, which she claimed was due to support for her homeland, many were unaware

that Goldstein would have been the only ar tist in the show which ultimately became an all-male lineup of nine ar tists whose work was similarly inspired by toys to have ever visited Gaza

Nat i o n a l n ew s c ove rage fo r t h e C I C A ex h i b i t i o n , i n cl u d i ng a

d et a i l e d re c a p o f h e r a b r u p t c a n c el l at i o n o n T h e C J N ’s da i l y

n ew s web s i te, o n l y m a n age d to s i d et ra ck G o l d s te i n fo r a few day s

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b e i ng p a r t o f a s u m m e r ex h i b -

i t i o n i n S tö ckel kel l e r, G e r m a ny, a

tel ev i s i o n s h ow b a s e d o n a n ot h e r

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P ri n c e s s e s , a n d a b o o k p roj e c t

ch ro n i cl i ng t h e f i r s t 3 0 ye a r s o f

h e r c a re e r

It was at the Jewish Western Bulletin (now the Jewish Independent) where Goldstein star ted her career in the early 1990s, capturing the communit y for black-andwhite newspaper pages Later that decade, as Canadian print media still had significant travel budgets, she picked up as signments for The Globe and Mail and Saturday Night

a scuffle that involved rocks being hurled at journalists

“That was probably the scariest thing I have ever been through as a photographer,” recounted Goldstein “By the end, we were all so thirst y. Somebody from Palestinian television gave us some water An Israeli soldier was there too, and we were all drinking from the same water.

One of those journeys involved photographing life in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank, during which she spent a week-and-a-half in the Palestinian areas, including a stay at the storied Windmill Hotel in Gaza Cit y On her first day in Gaza, she went directly to Rafah, and found herself in the middle of

“I was thinking, if we could all just sit down and drink from the same water, this thing could be resolved.”

Af ter that frightening moment, the trip to the Middle East evolved into a por trait series that proved more interesting to Goldstein than what she saw on the bat tleground It’s a series that covers ever yday life in the region : children laughing, girls in a clas sroom, a young boy selling candy apples on the street and a man riding in a donkey-drawn car t, among other images

“I was always interested in the Palestinian people and what life was like for them there I wanted to know who these people are, and what I discovered is that most people are ver y nice and welcoming I think because I am friendly and approachable that people invited me into their homes,” says Goldstein, who also went to the Jabalia refugee camp created by the United Nations in 1948 that was a target for Israel during the war of 2024

“Bathroom Mirror”, 2012

Goldstein’s photos from Gaza and West Bank, 1999

To as ses s the tensions properly, she believes one needs critical thinking abilities and a knowledge of histor y: “You have to come to it with an understanding and an opennes s to understand what is really happening.”

Back in Vancouver in the early 2000s, with her mother diagnosed with cancer and a young daughter enamoured with fairy-tale heroines, Goldstein began work on Fallen Princesses The 10-piece series, created from 2007 to 2009, features humanized versions of characters like Snow White, Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood confronting scourges like cancer, addiction, obesity, war and environmental degradation It also gave her a taste of viral internet attention

“It was recognized for many reasons, not only the ar twork It was a time when a lot of parents were asking questions of Disney For example, why are their female characters always victims? This is not the world our girls are being born into, and it was just really outdated ” (Grimm Lane is the title of a video adaptation that Goldstein hopes can be sold to a major streaming platform )

elected figures (The 10 Commandments, 2019)

Like many ar tists, the pandemic lockdown gave Goldstein a window to focus on archiving her past work, and the resulting publication of the pieces she cherishes most will be titled XXX. Now, she’s working on Mistresspieces, that will shed a dif ferent light on how women were por trayed in some of the most famous paintings ever, such as The Bir th of Venus by Sandro Bot ticelli, Girl With a Pearl Earring by Johannes Vermeer, and the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci Her aim is to shif t the spotlight to recognize the subjects more than the ar tists

Goldstein would have been the only woman artist in the show, as well as the only to have ever visited Gaza.

In the Dollhouse followed three years later, and then her 20 years of profes sional work were marked in her own studio with a retrospective of 20 pieces The past decade found Goldstein creating series exploring both mainstream and fringe religions (Gods of Suburbia, 2014) , a reconceptualization of 1930s illustrated adver tising posters (Modern Girl, 2016) , a series drawing from Jewish folklore (Snapshots from the Garden of Eden, 2017) and an examination of the socio-political fabric of the U.S. through its

And that’s also how Goldstein has increasingly come to see herself af ter the Toy Stor y incident, as a “hybrid” who feels too Israeli for Canada, yet also too Canadian for Israel Playing with perceptions was already a central theme in her work Now her own legacy includes the experience of being sidelined for what she considered antisemitism, even if the CICA galler y told her some contradictor y technical and ar tistic reasons were behind its decision

“We see these characters in stor ytelling, and how stor ytelling is impor tant yet deceiving,” says Goldstein “I tr y to say that with my alternate realities ” 

Sam Margolis is a Victoria-based contributor to The CJN who has written for The Globe and Mail, National Post, United Pres s International, MSNBC, and the Jewish Independent.

Goldstein in Gaza, 1999

What’s the worst that could happen? the worst

While widely recognized for looking in the mirror to capture himself as the narrator of several documentar y films that star ted with his compulsive record-collecting confes sions in the 2000 release Vinyl a new chapter in Alan Zweig’s career begins in September as host of The Worst Podcast produced by Canadaland, the media company founded a decade ago by Jes se Brown.

The task of get ting celebrities to disclose their most loathsome behaviour alternated with the making of a movie in which he retraces the steps of friends who died by

suicide, a production that has taken him as far as Cambodia Confes sions have long been a fixture of his work, from talking to naysayers in I, Curmudgeon, to probing the romantically challenged in Lovable Later films had greater emotional intensit y: the saga of one -leg ged cancer fundraiser Steve Fonyo, ex-convicts readjusting to societ y, and former police officers recounting their traumas.

Zweig was also behind When Jews Were Funny, an exploration of how the ethnic humour he grew up with faded from fashion It’s a topic aligned with the pas sions of

Alan Zweig talks to Ralph Benmergui about trading his documentary camera for a podcast microphone to ask celebrities terrible personal questions

Ralph Benmergui, who was initially known in Toronto as a stand-up comedian but that came af ter he got some seminal screen time, thanks to a slightly older friend tr ying to find his own way with a camera

Now, as Benmergui set tles into steadily hosting Not That Kind of Rabbi for The CJN Podcast Network, he paid a visit to Zweig’s house in the Junction neighbourhood of Toronto, to catch up and contemplate how their paths are still cros sing, 50 years af ter a deal involving a waterbed.

This inter view is edited and condensed from a dialogue that took place hours

before the solar eclipse of April 8, 2024

Listen to more conversations with Ralph Benmergui at thecjn.ca/ntkr. Michael Fraiman, director, The CJN Podcast Net work

Ralph Benmergui : The first time we were ever in the same room together was in 1974, in the first place I lived outside of my parents’ house in Toronto: 312 Avenue Rd. I get there and see a guy sit ting on a futon bed There’s a Hindu tapestr y thing on the wall, and he’s smoking a beedi cigaret te from India I’m at an age where if I’m 19 and you’re 22, 23, 24 years old it’s like wow, this is a guy from another generation

Alan Zweig : What I remember is that I was going on a trip to Boulder, Colorado, to sit in at Naropa Universit y I took poetr y clas ses with Allen Ginsberg I was going to be gone for a couple weeks and my room was going to be free And I had a waterbed, which I thought you and your then- girlfriend would enjoy spending a couple weeks on That’s how I remember how we met

RB : OK, now I remember too, but I also recall you were sit ting there in a ver y South Asian pose

A Z : It was a moment when I seemed older and wiser it was a moment that didn’t last

RB : But do you think there’s any residue from all of those India experiences in your life today ?

A Z : It was 50 years ago this past fall, and I’m still in touch with the people I went there with, including two girls from Texas who were ver y impor tant to my coming of age stor y, and the two guys who are currently in Vancouver and Salt Spring Island I sug gested the five of us get together again because you could easily make a movie about it One of us ended up in prison in Iran for tr ying to smug gle hash. One of us had a kid One of us had a schizophrenic breakdown on the beach in Goa, and I put them on a plane back to Toronto And one of them just said, “A long time ago I knew you for a ver y shor t time ” Lots of things have happened to all of us since. I compare it to my father who was in the Second World War. How did he deal with friends who died while flying in planes over Germany ? You would have PTSD, but also

dining on those stories for the rest of your life He never said a word about it besides, “I never shot a man in anger ” This was six months of my life when I was 21 And I know it changed my life I was on the Jewish route to law school. In Grade 13 I read Jack Kerouac’s On the Road and I thought I’ve got to get of f this road to law school When I got into Osgoode Hall I said, OK, give me a year to travel. And had I gone to England and Swit zerland

and Amsterdam instead of India, I think I would’ve come home and got ten the law degree Somehow on the road in India I was like, OK, I don’t have to do what’s being expected of me for the rest of my life

RB : You had a Dharma Bum thing going on. We can look at life dif ferently than the way we do.

A Z : And that’s what happened. These two ladies from Texas I mentioned, Lisa and Jenny, were like older sisters to me. I’ve found that people from repres sive places, if they escaped those places, they’d be

the coolest people you’ve ever met I didn’t have to pay any price in Forest Hill by having long hair and smoking dope and tr ying to be cool there was nothing pushing back against that But they had a big pushback, you can imagine. And they accepted me in some way that made me think I could make a meal of this stor y. But why did I need that acceptance? Why didn’t I have that acceptance? I didn’t think I was allowed to be this version of myself

I went to India again the next year because I didn’t know what to do I figured I’d go to York Universit y for filmmaking, then a guy there told me Sheridan College in Oak ville had more of what I wanted York people made Hollywood films, narrative films The teachers at Sheridan were experimental.

RB : And that’s where we intersected again, your student movie called The Boys, which was about four friends hanging out together But why did you choose me to play one of them?

AZ: I was just casting I didn’t know how much

you would dominate There was no such thing as docudrama back then, but that’s what it was I had a final cut I really liked, and that’s where I caught the bug, you guys being bored together at Mister Donut at the corner of St Clair and Vaughan, which had just opened at the time There was a shot I had of all four of you sitting there waiting, and I thought that was the perfect ending

RB : Years later, I saw you through the window at a cof fee shop right af ter they

announced the Hot Docs film festival lineup You were par t of the pres s conference, but you looked like you’d just run over your own dog I remember telling you to be happier about ever ything. Like, you’re Alan Zweig now, people think you’re great at this, you know?

didn’t really know me Don’t pretend When I won the 2013 award for Best Canadian Feature not the best documentar y, the best film overall at the Toronto International Film Festival for When Jews Were Funny, I said to my then-wife: I gues s I can’t use that narrative anymore I’m now tr ying to write a one -man show, and I wanted it to be all about failure My girlfriend, who’s a theatre director, tells me a lit tle goes a long way And it’s like, really ? I could do hours about failure, I’ll never b i i

RB : And you’re doing a podcast where you ask other people about their darkest moments too.

makes people feel good is feeling that somebody else has the same is sues. You’re not alone

And yeah, it also relates to the fact that I have a persona I even made a documentar y called I, Curmudgeon, although that was meant to be an ironic joke But you know how your Not That Kind of Rabbi podcast is about spiritualit y ? This par t of my life is also spiritual. I’ve seen people af fected by sad things in my films, especially the one about ex-cons, A Hard Name People told me that it changed their hear t I didn’t get that before, but now it’s an ar ticle of faith for me

Now, if I ask you to be in my films, you can s ay no But I really want to encourage you to tell your s ad s tor y, because it’ll be good for other people That’s what people need in a way They need to hear about something specific, rather than general My spiritual feeling is that we exis t in the world to tell each other our s torie s, to make us feel like we’re connected That’s why I make documentarie s about people’s live s, and not about a baseball game or a famous per son.

RB : You know that Pixar animated movie Inside Out? I showed it to my youngest son, because I wanted him to see that you don’t have to keep telling people that you’re OK and ever ything’s fine, because you need sadnes s to have a full life You can’t just be, pull up your socks, go get them And that’s a really impor tant les son for kids because other wise we just take our sadnes s out to the back yard, bur y it, and pretend we’re not that because those people are not succeeding in life, right? So when I think of how that can be par t of a spiritual journey, the spiritual par t for you, the sharing moment where we’re vulnerable? Because in some of the work I do as a spiritual director, you have to move people toward sadnes s, and toward death

A Z : But I always defined my life and my career in terms of snatching victor y from the jaws of defeat. When I made Vinyl, I was 48, and that was the first tiny bit of success I had af ter 25 years of ut ter strug gle. If somebody met me from that point on, I felt like if you didn’t know me when I was a failure, you

A Z : That’s par t of my thinking that there are things nobody talks about, and it would be good if they had a chance to. You ask a friend how they’re doing and they’ll respond that their life is going great. I know people who stopped being friends because this guy told him how great life was going and he was like, “I can’t be your friend anymore ” So, the idea is based on how what

A Z : That’s par t of the reason I wanted to make a documentary about suicide I was hoping my fear of death might mitigate a little if I made a film about death The other thing in my identity is that I’m an old dad. I was almost 59 when my daughter was born So, par t of the thing is to put as much into her as you can, pack it in so that if I die when she’s 18 or something, she will be full of you. And unfor tunately, one of the things I packed in during her childhood was sarcasm

RB : I also do s arcasm But you know, I have t wo sets of kids, and the second set were born when I was 50 and 53 they ’re now 14 and 18, the other t wo are 34 and 37 People keep telling me the s ame thing: it keeps you young. And I always s ay no, it doe sn’t keep you young It make s you not want to die. When I had cancer, my younge s t was t wo- and- a-half, and I’m reading I Love You Forever by Rober t Munsch to him And I’m thinking , if this doe sn’t work out, I’m jus t nothing to him, I evaporate I’m jus t someone they tell him about, and he has no actual under s tanding or memor y of me It doe s bring an urgency to life But I think that’s a good thing

A Z : I t ke e p s yo u yo u ng o n l y i n t h e s e n s e t h at by age 6 5 o r 6 6, yo u c o u l d p o s s i b l y

wa l k a ro u n d l e s s B u t i n my o n e - m a n

s h ow I h ave a s to r y a b o u t p l ay i ng a ga m e

wi t h my da ug h te r w h e re yo u ch a s e h e r

a n d s h e r u n s a h e a d o f yo u l a ug h i ng ,

a n d t h e n yo u r u n u p b eh i n d h e r a n d s h e

h e a r s yo u a n d s h e l a ug h s a n d s h e r u n s

a h e a d S h e h a s ge a r s t h at I d o n’ t h ave

a ny m o re.

She’s running towards the road, cackling and now I have to actually run, or my version of running, which means pounding the pavement: Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! And I grab her before she gets to the road At that age, I’d have never run. It doesn’t keep you young I always wanted a kid, but when you talk about my dyspeptic nature, it’s still there I can’t get rid of it But because of my daugh-

ter and my girlfriend and my career, I can say I’m happier than I’ve ever been.

RB : Given your ambivalence about projects, what are you hoping for with The Worst Podcast?

I can probably get Ralph Benmergui to talk to me like this, I wouldn’t be nervous. But it’s a concept you have to work towards if you’ve never met the guest before.

A Z : Wel l, I ’ m a m b i va l e n t b e c a u s e w h e n I we n t to t h e p ro d u c e r

his name But then I saw his name and I was like: Oh, I know who you are I’ve been completely in control of all my films, I don’t use anything that I don’t want to use. I don’t think about the theme, I don’t think about the mes sage, I don’t think about metaphors I just think about not being boring and throwing balls in the air, keeping them there to the end That’s my whole gig So, I don’t know if I can be good for half an hour, pointed Then again, I find a lot of nice podcasts are boring, and I’m afraid mine will also be boring but they’ll be happy with my boring podcast

R B : D i f fe re n t p e o p l e wo r k i n d i f fe re n t way s L i ke, i f I ’ m go i ng to go o u t a n d t a l k to a n a u d i e n c e o r a g ro u p,

d

cu m e n t

A n d rat h e r t h

n p l ug g i

t h e i r b o o k , I ’ l l a s k a c el eb r i t y a b o u t t h e

wo r s t t h i ng t h ey eve r s a i d to t h e i r m ot h e r

I c a n p ro b a b l y get Ra l p h B e n m e rg u i to t a l k to m e l i ke t h i s , I wo u l d n’ t b e n e r vo u s B u t i t’s a c o n c e p t yo u h ave to wo r k towa rd s i f yo u’ ve n eve r m et t h e g u e s t b efo re

I was ner vous about the first one, but I said not to tell me who it is, I didn’t look at

A Z : Well, that might be true. You know, the first one was OK, I’m doing four more, but they’re not even ordering a whole season. I’ll be recording five episodes and they’re gonna put them out there. The thing is, if it doesn’t work and they don’t want it, I’ll feel like I gave it a shot.

RB : You could always do another one, and you could call that show I Should’ve Been a Law yer n

Looking back on our first year at the Toronto Holocaust Museum

Since opening a year ago, the Toronto Holocaust Museum ( THM) has become an essential space for dialogue and reflection, fostering understanding and remembrance during these challenging times. The Museum is proud to be a place where people of all backgrounds, from across Toronto reflect on this difficult past , how it contributes to our present , and informs our collective future. At the core of the museum experience are the voices of Holocaust sur vivors sharing their stories. Their unique insight provides visitors with a view into individual experiences, deep trauma, and admirable resilience. now more than ever, it is important to visit the museum anD learn from the experiences of holocaust survivors.

Over the past year we have welcomed nearly 50,000 visitors to the Museum, including thousands of students We hope that when people visit the museum, they find a way to see themselves reflected in this histor y and connect with its legac y as Canadians who each play a role in protecting and promoting civil societ y. More than ever, education is needed to promote understanding and empathy.

It was an amazing, inspiring, anD honouring experience to view the holocaust through the eyes of those affecteD, but also by following them after the holocaust anD learning about how canaDa playeD a role in their postwar survival.

— TDSB Student

Throughout the year, the THM has trained hundreds of educators providing them with tools and resources for foundational teaching, ex tending the learning into the classroom.

Through our dynamic public programs, we have explored the beaut y and depth of Jewish life before, during, and after the Holocaust. We have brought generations together to learn from a shared past

through traditions and culture while also exploring the Holocaust through thematic lenses with communit y par tners and exper ts.

During a perioD of unpreceDenteD antisemitism, the toronto holocaust museum stanDs as a beacon for learning, civil Discourse, anD reflection.

The legac y of the Holocaust and its vital lessons are in each of our hands. While we persevere through this challenging time, it is incumbent on all of us to examine and remember our shared past to consider our resilience, strength, and commitment to a Jewish future

We look forward to welcoming you to the THM.

Students explore the Toronto Holocaust Museum

What is

Jewish music, any way ?

Avi Finegold scales the sounds of Niggun MiSinai

Most people have some idea of what Jewish food is or, at least, they think they do They probably even have some opinions about it: which versions of cer tain recipes they prefer, which are more authentic But the truth is there is hardly any food that is natively, inherently Jewish. Whether you think of Ashkenazi clas sics like mat zah balls, smoked meat, or bagels, or staples of Israeli cuisine like falafel and hummus, the foods we think of as Jewish have all come from the lived environments Jews found themselves in. These foods became incorporated into Jewish culture simply by being there at the right moments in

time and hanging around for long enough

The same argument can be made for Jewish music When we tend to think of klezmer or the Middle Eastern modes that t ypif y Jewish music, it is not a far leap to point to existing sounds in the folk or ar t music of whatever milieu that music was made in The inherently Jewish aspects of “Jewish” music are generally related to the lyrics rather than the music itself, that are borrowed from prayer or psalms. But the rest of it what the music actually sounds like is influenced by our surroundings. Much of what is described as Jewish music today is a continuation of this trend.

We still, typically, hear ar tists graf ting Jewish lyrics onto existing musical genres Thus we have Matisyahu per forming middling reg gae with lyrics pulled from Hasidic teachings, or Nefesh Mountain, an ace bluegrass band with Jewish summer-camp vibes

Does it mat ter that a casual listener of the music might not even be aware that it is Jewish? The ver y fact that we can ask the question highlights the reality that lyrics and intent aren’t enough to make music Jewish.

Zale Newman, a Toronto hedge fund manager with deep roots as a Jewish music per former and producer, argues that the way music is used the context in which it

Mordechai Ben David

Lipa Schmeltzer

Bracha Jaffe

Yaakov Shwekey

is played defines its Jewishnes s “We only use music at ver y par ticular occasions,” he said to me recently “So we use it for dancing, for a wedding, and things like that. We use it for serious times, like par ts of the davening… we want to reflect happines s or sadnes s or seriousnes s ”

As someone who has had headphones of some kind of another firmly planted onto my skull long before iPods existed, I wonder about what this means about all the other music that we listen to Most Jews nowadays, even those who “do Jewish” in much of their lives, do not exclusively listen to Jewish music ; this, I would argue, says something about how integrated the sound of music has become both inside and outside the Jewish communit y Which brings me, perhaps surprisingly, to the mat ter of haredi music

Here are some truths about contemporar y haredi music : it is one of the only genres of music that has listeners who listen to it exclusively, it has managed to create a specific sound that is immediately recognizable, and it can be irresistibly catchy despite its unrefined melodies and lyrics that are of ten beyond trite All of which makes it a great lens through with to examine some of the questions raised above, about what makes music not just incidentally, but characteristically Jewish

If you’re unfamiliar with the genre I’m calling Contemporar y Haredi, it is a distinct sound that has been building momentum for over 30 years As with other genres, it has its superstars : Mordechai Ben David, Yaakov Shwekey, and Lipa Schmelczer are some of the big gest names Lyrically, the music draws primarily on biblical and liturgical sources, layered with original lyrics in English that are beg ging for a rewrite Contemporar y Haredi has its origins in cantorial music and Has sidic songs, blended with the folk and rock sounds of the 1970s and ‘80s As time pas sed, technolog y became more advanced, and synthesizers became both more complex and les s expensive, the sound evolved Today it has not only become ubiquitous in the haredi communit y but has of ten cros sed over into the general Jewish population (you know if you’ve ever danced to “Mashiach” at a hora) and occasionally gone globally viral as well (look up the Miami Boys Choir on TikTok)

This is, decidedly, not just music that is reser ved for simchas and prayer; it has cros sed into ever yday life Contemporar y

Haredi music is a soundtrack for people’s lives the sonic wallpaper in many Jewish stores and homes

I like to imagine the writers of these songs as they pen what they hope will be the next big hit, wondering if it will sound good at a wedding or during The Musaf ser vice but also if a 14-year-old will connect with it alone in their bedroom, or a middle -aged parent will feel impelled to turn it on while driving their kids to school

Contemporary Haredi music is a soundtrack for people’s lives—the sonic wallpaper in many Jewish stores and homes.

we have music that melodically is firmly rooted in the arena-rock and power ballads of the 1990s and early 2000s This feels simultaneously current enough (in that it isn’t ‘60s folk music) but also retro enough to not be too contemporar y and, by extension, “goyish ” With its emphasis on strong melodic hooks, it’s also ver y singable: someone leading Mus saf or a group at a Shabbat table can really get into it Interestingly, Jewish versions of this subgenre sound remarkably similar to Christian Evangelical worship music Haredi Jews and Evangelicals are generally not aware of this, but are quick to hear the similarities if you play each a sample of the other’s music

The similarities make sense: both have origins in late -20th centur y popular music and share the goal of inspiring people to worship

Then we have music for weddings and other joyous occasions This has been heavily influenced by electronic dance music (EDM) and other genres originally

This is a good example of creating a framework for the idea of Jewish music as such For many Jews, much of the time, when they listen to Jewish (or “Jew-ish” ) music, they are doing so more out of a sense of nostalgia and tradition, or a sense of obligation, or in vir tue of circumstance. This doesn’t negate the Jewishnes s of that music, but it doesn’t bode well for it as a living, evolving par t of culture, either What I’ve been calling Haredi Contemporar y includes a couple of dif ferent sub- genres, as it were On the one hand

intended as club music This is music engineered to be danceable and visceral, and its translation to the haredi world makes a cer tain amount of practical sense

It is of ten producer driven and created at a computer and keyboard rather than with a full band in a studio. In a world where cost-ef fectivenes s is a vir tue, having music that can be created by one person and performed at a wedding without requiring a full band (or any band at all) has its merits

A cer tain amount of sense but not entirely In the non-Jewish world, EDM is the last

Lipa Schmeltzer and Avraham Fried

thing you’d expect to hear at a wedding

But maybe that’s what makes it interesting Perhaps this is a communit y of young adults showing where they might be if not for religious boundaries maybe wayward haredi youth actually sneak away to raves, or the weddings they dance at ser ve as a kind of analogue for that experience It is, perhaps, a telling example of how culture can reveal a communit y’s actual preferences over their stated ones

A few words about gender are warranted here If all you knew about haredi music was what was played at weddings and in stores, you might well think that this world is male dominated While the public-facing music is cer tainly exclusively male, there is a growing segment of haredi women that are making music to be listened to by other women These women feel bound by the halachic concept that a woman’s sung voice should only be heard by other women, and are creating music within those boundaries, accepting traditional constraints but not being fully silenced. The book For Women and Girls Only: Reshaping Jewish Or thodoxy through the Ar ts in the

Digital Age, by ethnomusicologist Jes sica Roda, was published earlier this year; in it, Roda discus ses how these women are being empowered and choosing to per form, even if for a limited audience

Some of these women singers like Bracha Jaf fe, who has YouTube videos with slick production values and plays large concer ts have significant followings in the communit y Others choose to remain understated, circulating their music on private WhatsApp groups and using only their first names to avoid scrutiny The remarkable thing about the phenomenon is that this genre of per former exists because of a confluence of factors both old and new, communal and secular Historically, when women gathered for prayer in Ashkenazi communities, there was a chazente, or female prayer leader, who guided ser vices even if they weren’t including par ts of prayer that were traditionally limited to male minyans. Or thodox girls’ schools also have a long histor y of put ting on plays or musicals, which is where many of the current crop of per formers got their star ts But it would be impos sible to ignore the

role of feminism in societ y more broadly in suppor ting these per formers, empowering many of these women to find their voices

Music can be both a mirror held up to a societ y, revealing its values, as well as a door way between cultures. The haredi communit y likes to think of itself as insulated and practicing unchanging, ancient traditions But haredi music paints a completely dif ferent picture: one of a communit y that as similates new ideas, sometimes slowly and sometimes with remarkable rapidit y However many rabbis might decr y the sounds that are played at Jewish weddings and cer tainly some do those sounds aren’t going away The communit y’s desires are clearly outweighing any edicts Then again, the sounds that have filtered in are selective: the absence of hip-hop influences in Contemporar y Haredi telegraphs the communit y’s deep uneasines s with African- American culture

None of this exists in a vacuum

These writers and musicians know that their audience is aware of their greater cultural world They may not be the most sophisticated creators of music, but they definitely have a knack for hearing sounds that might not be par t of the culture and bringing them into the fold

There is a term that Jewish musicians and e specially cantor s like to use : Nig gun MiSinai. This term, which translate s to “a melody that come s from Sinai,” is used when a tune’s composer is no longer known due to age or other vagarie s of transmis sion over time I used to think this was a cute way of approaching the se songs, e specially as many of them are fairly ubiquitous Then I heard a haredi rabbi, in a pre sentation about high holiday prayer, de scribe the se as the ver y melodie s that the Israelite s s ang at Sinai I re sis ted the urge to go up to him af terwards and ask if he really believed that the se people, at their greate s t moment of national revelation, were lis tening to songs based on 17th centur y folk scale s from Eas tern Europe I now realize that the true answer to such a dis tor ted under s tanding is to let the leader s theorize and condemn all they want. The people dancing at weddings know the truth The teenager lis tening on her AirPods knows the truth. The Chas sid who decided to learn the bas s knows the truth. The klezmer and hazzanut of the future is the dance and synagogue music of today

Mordechai Ben David and Shmueli Ungar

180 Shaw St , Toronto | kofflerarts org

An exhibition by Giselle Beiguelman May 30 – October 20, 2024

The Canadian Jewish News takes you on a nationwide search for sound to get you kvelling about our collective cultural contributions

Whether a Jewish background is integral to their sound, or it’s something they note when discussing their influences, this countr y has several vibrant live performers who bring pride in their traditions to the music scene You can find some

Jewish musicians schlepping cross Canada during July and August, radiating vibes with much-needed nachas in an ef for t to get back to celebrating how we’re connected along with the return of some festival fixtures during the steamiest time of the year

AL ANIS MORIS SE T TE

Three decades af ter recording the angst-riddled Jag ged Lit tle Pill, the Ot tawa-born singer described herself as “Super Jewish” on the PBS show Finding Your Roots, where it was explained that her maternal grandparents were Holocaust sur vivors who identified as Catholic to save themselves Budweiser Stage, Toronto, July 13-14. alanis.com

SUMMER JAM CONCERT SERIES

Tributes to the Grateful Dead, the Band and the Allman Brothers accompanied original acts for the inaugural 2023 event presented by the Ashkenaz Festival and Magen Boys Enter tainment The sequel is expanding from three nights to four in the at tempt to redefine Jewish music for a new generation Earl Bales Park, Toronto, July 15 and 29, Aug 12 and 26 ashkenaz.ca

THE WATCHMEN

It’s been 35 years since this band got early ink in The Canadian Jewish News for representing Winnipeg in a Rock Showdown in Toronto, not long before they shared management and momentum with the Tragically Hip The reunited group will diver t from their day jobs to open for Neil Young & Craz y Horse Harris Park, London, Ont , July 13. the - watchmen.com

CHROMEO

Montreal disco duo David “Dave 1” Macklovitch and Patrick “P-Thug g” Gemayel have joked they’re “the only succes sful Arab/Jewish par tnership since the dawn of human culture ” A fall tour that includes Toronto and Vancouver will be foreshadowed as par t of the nation’s Canada Day celebration LeBreton Flats Park, Ot tawa, July 1 chromeo net

ABIGAIL L APELL

Anniversar y, the latest album from this Toronto singer-songwriter, features backing by alt-folk fixtures Great Lake Swimmers, while her own ascent has led to billing at multiple festivals Dawson Cit y Music Festival, Yukon, July 19-21; Blue Skies Music Festival, Clarendon Station, Ont , Aug 2-4; Edmonton Folk Music Festival, Aug 8-11 abigaillapell.com

GEDDY LEE

Following a speaking tour of theatres last fall to elaborate upon the stories in his memoir My Effin’ Life, the Toronto-based frontman for Rush says he’s eager to get back to full-time music af ter the death of drummer Neil Pear t, but he’s up for two final rounds of conversation and translation Festival d’été de Québec, Quebec Cit y, July 13 rush.com

BEN CAPLAN

Biblical imagery and klezmer-inflected melodies are integral to the sound of the Hamilton, Ont.-born and Halifax-based singer-songwriter, who sports facial hair reflecting those traditions, and a man bun hairstyle living up to his modern twist. He’s playing at the 63-year-old Mariposa Folk Festival before jaunting to Austria. Tudhope Park, Orillia, Ont, July 5. bencaplan.ca

SCHMALTZ & PEPPER

Toronto Symphony principal clarinetist Eric Abramovitz and violinist Drew Jurecka— whose credits include albums by Dua Lipa—lead this ensemble aspiring to push the boundaries of Yiddish music alongside members Rebekah Wolkstein, Michael Herring and Jeremy Ledbetter. Walter Hall, University of Toronto Faculty of Music, July 23. schmaltzandpepper.com

DRAKE

What drama awaits Aubrey Graham after the hits he took from Kendrick Lamar? OVO Festival coincides with the Toronto Caribbean Carnival, for which the Jewish rapper can be counted on to drive downtown from the Bridle Path. The certain sell-out crowds each August long weekend since 2010 means details can wait till the last minute. ovosound.com

JAFFA ROAD

The vocals of Tamar Ilana accompany guitarist founder Aaron Lightstone in the ensemble founded in Toronto in 2005, who are bringing Jewish and Arabic sounds with influence from India to the Hillside Festival with: bassist Justin Gray, saxophonist and flautist Sunda Riswanathan and Rakesh Tewari. Guelph Lake Island, July 21. jaffaroad.com

STEVEN PAGE

Between dates with Trans-Canada Highwaymen and solo shows, the former Barenaked Ladies baritone has Ontario dates with fellow Jewish Canadian musician Andrew Burashko’s Art of Time Ensemble, performing the 1967 Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Huntsville, July 23; Prince Edward County, July 24; Ottawa, July 25. stevenpage.com

KLEZTORY

Ottawa Chamberfest plays host to the nomadic Montreal ensemble founded in the year 2000, which has tallied over 1,000 shows across Quebec and beyond. Catching up on 20th anniversary celebrations delayed due to the pandemic, the quintet will bring the sounds of the shtetl to the nation’s capital. Gladstone Theatre, Ottawa, Aug. 4. kleztory.com

DANA SIPOS

Yellowknife is where this Jewish Canadian singer-songwriter spent her formative years Now she lives on Vancouver Island, that has fur ther inspired contemplations acclaimed around the planet, but she has upcoming shows in B.C. : Gabriola Ar ts Centre, July 11; Pachena Bay Campground, Vancouver, July 19 ; Vinyl Env y, Victoria, July 26 danasipos com

ARIEL POSEN

Two instrumental albums titled Mile End highlighted the guitar vir tuosit y of the former member of Canadian alt-countr y act the Bros Landreth But the alum of the Gray Academy of Jewish Education returns to singer-songwriter mode on the album Reasons Why, and as a headliner at his hometown folk festival Birds Hill Park, Winnipeg, July 11-14 arielposen com

ALE X ANDRA STRÉLISKI

The neo-clas sical pianist was recently heard on the soundtrack to the Holocaust drama Irena’s Vow, while her own solo piano work projects personalit y without saying a word Now she’s a headliner in her hometown’s jazz festival, fronting 18 musicians to play pieces from her albums and film scores Place Des Ar ts, Montreal, July 2 and 3 alexandrastreliski.com

AVIVA CHERNICK AND L A SERENA QUARTE T

The ar tist in residence at Toronto’s Beth Tzedec Congregation will bring her Judeo-Spanish folk to the nation’s capital with a multicultural band of musicians : a guitarist originally from Greece, a bas sist originally from Sudan, a percus sionist originally from Iran and a horn player and vocalist originally from India Wood Terrace, Ot tawa, Aug 22-23 avivachernick com

KLEZK ANADA SUMMER RE TRE AT

This gathering has become the signature event for the Montreal organization founded in 1996, that is dedicated to keeping Yiddish culture vibrant acros s Canada and the world Theatre, dance, visual ar ts, language and literature and food are in the program, along with plent y of klezmer Le Petit Bonheur, Lac Quenouille, Que., Aug. 20-26 klezkanada.org

TAMAR IL ANA & VENTANAS

The singer and flamenco dancer from Toronto was born to a Jewish musicologist mother who’s half Romanian and half Scot tish, and a father from Saultaux First Nation Her musical reper toire of over 20 dif ferent languages will feature alongside Sephardis and Balkan sounds as par t of the annual Chamber fest Gladstone Theatre, Ot tawa, July 27. tamarilana com 

Jewish Canadians need a voice now more than ever.

In these di cult times, we need a voice like The Canadian Jewish News. A voice that unabashedly highlights the issues i m p

r

s i n g a n t i semitism in our communities. A platform for Jews to speak, and be heard.

The Board and Staff of THE LEO BAECK DAY SCHOOL

wish a hearty בוט לזמ to the Grade 8 Graduating Class of 2023-2024

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Milberg

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We are proud of your educational achievement and your commitment to Judaism May you enjoy continued success in your future education

The Board of Directors, Administration and Staff Congratulate Robbins Hebrew Academy’s 2024 Graduates!

Mazal Tov! !בוט

Jordan Ames

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Jonah Blinick

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CLASS OF 2024

Hilit Luk

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Braeden Worth

“And these youths... God gave them knowledge and understanding in every book and wisdom...”

(Daniel 1:17)

On behalf of the Board and staff at Associated Hebrew schools, Mazal Tov to all our Class of ‘24 graduates!

Julie Ava Adam

Matthew Blake Anisman

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Lilah Aida Beck

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Marc Benitah

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Shoshana Lily Birnboim

Ella Elka Blum

Ness Noah Botbol

Adam Avi Brener

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Lior Isaac Chodirker

Benjamin Tuvia Cooper

Noah Reid Cordes

Leah Elizabeth Davidson

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Caden Thomas Dennis

Orli Robyn Devlin

Shoshana Clara Dworski

Ethan Jack English

Zev Avraham Erlich

Zachary Moses Etienne

Lev Ryan Farache

Lily Mazal Fegelman

Chaya Devorah Fellig

Isabelle Fischler

Farrah Fox

Maya Addison Freilich

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Ezra Shai Frisch

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Manchester Gold

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Dov Eli Viktor Grauman

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Ellie Mogilevich

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Jordyn Rachel Pasternak

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Noa Sarah Prisman

Nomie Ryen Rebick

Adira Liel Rosenberg

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Daniel Alexander Rucker

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Jordan David Samuel

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Schwartz-Manne

Levi Shai Silverberg

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Chayim Aaron Sokoloff

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Ryder Irving Yoken

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Eliav Jonah Zlochower

Elad Zur

Waking up

from woke

Two new books reflect on the illiberal movement

In a 2022 National Review es say, Why I Keep Get ting Mistaken for a Conser vative, my friend and Feminine Chaos podcast co-host Kat Rosenfield, an American novelist and cultural critic, recounts how, despite having always been a “free - speech and bleeding -hear t” liberal, “conser vatives so of ten mistake me for one of their own ” This happens, she writes, “not because I argue for right-wing policies or from a right-wing perspective, but because progres sives are of ten extremely, publicly mad at me for refusing to parrot the latest catechism and for criticizing the progres sive dogmas that either violate my principles or make no sense ” This puts her in good company, she goes on to write : “There’s a loose but growing coalition of lef ties out there, ar tists and writers and academic s and profes sionals, who’ve drawn sympathetic at tention from conser vatives af ter being publicly shamed out of the progressive clubhouse (that is, by the t ype of progres sive who thinks there is a clubhouse, which is of course par t of the problem) ” If Nor th American Jews pull our weight and then some in the coalition Rosenfield de scribe s, this is more than incidental. Right- winger s tend not to be the big ge s t champions of religious or ethnic minoritie s Jewish value s of ten seem a bet ter fit with the lef t, making many Jews see

the lef t as their natural political home. The American e s s ayis t Milton Himmelfarb famously s aid that we “earn like Episcopalians and vote like Puer to Ricans ” In the pos t war period, some American Jews broke with their lef t-liberal origins in favour of a new brand of conser vatism, one born of that par ticular political journey and therefore dis tinct from the thing usually called conser vatism This is roughly what neoconser vative thinker (and Himmelfarb’s brother-in-law) Ir ving Kris tol was get ting at when he s aid that neoconser vative s were liberals “mug ged by realit y ” Today ’s dis sident-liberal Jewish intellectuals are more likely to call themselve s (our selve s ) heterodox than neoconser vative, or to continue calling our selve s liberals, or to e schew labels entirely Two new Jewish- authored books explore disillusionment with the lef t from the per spective of thinker s who have par tially fallen out with it: Nellie Bowle s’s Morning Af ter the Revolution: Dispatches from the Wrong Side of Histor y, and Katherine Brodsk y ’s more clunkily titled No Apologies : How to find and Free Your Voice in the A ge of Outrage Les sons for the Silenced Majorit y. Both books mix per sonal accounts of the author s’ own trajectorie s with broader repor ting on what they (and, sometime s, I ) see as progre s sive exce s se s

In media circle s, the L.A . -based Bowle s is a big deal A former New York Times repor ter, she’s now at The Free Pres s, a media company founded by her wife, fellow former Time s employee Bari Weis s, as a counterpoint to what they view as an overly reticent mains tream. Bowle s, for her par t, made her name with a 2018 Time s profile of Jordan Peter son. Bowle s and Weis s are both, in a non-derogator y sense, macher s Katherine Brodsk y, by contras t is no macher She is a C anadian freelance writer, her book published by a small pre s s In her newslet ter “about” section, she pre sents her self as a lit tle bit dangerous : “It’s only fair to warn you : Here live s a cer tain femme fatale trapped in the mind of a writer with an overactive imagination ” It is pos sible I am not the target audience for this mode of self-pre sentation But No Apologies isn’t much about Brodsk y She has a back ground as a celebrit y inter viewer and is skilled at get ting other people, famous and other wise, to share their own s torie s . Her book is not the event that Bowle s’s is, but it cover s similar ground. Both author s come acros s as driven not merely by some abs tract defense of free expre s sion but by journalis tic curiosit y And you do, at a minimum, want an author who seems curious

Nellie Bowles

Bowle s s ticks narrowly chronologically if not topically to the 2020 racial reckoning following the police murder of George Floyd and its af termath. One gets the impre s sion that prior to 2020, Bowle s wasn’t e specially plug ged into cancel-culture–t ype debate s, and fair enough mos t were not. Brodsk y, for her par t, goe s back earlier, to the 2017 #MeToo movement and the proto-‘woke’ 2010s also a solid choice, given that 2020 was itself merely the late s t and mos t intense (due in par t to lockdowns and corre sponding online -ne s s ) incarnation of something dating to roughly 2008, with a precur sor in 1990s political correctne s s

Despite enjoying Bowles’s writing, a par t of me was resistant to Morning Af ter the Revolution It looked like the latest in a seemingly inexhaustible supply of accounts from people who were present for summer 2020 drama at the New York Times opinion pages and are, for related reasons, no longer working there Former editor James Bennet wrote an Economist es say, “When the New York Times lost its way,” the leng th of a shor t book. A lower-rung ex-staf fer, Adam Rubenstein, penned I Was a Heretic at The New York Times for The Atlantic. There was also Weis s’s own resignation let ter I feel as though I was there, even though I know full well that I was in Canada looking af ter a toddler at the time.

Times -specific reminiscences thank fully make up lit tle of Morning Af ter Much will never theles s be familiar to those who’ve been following heterodox media (especially the Blocked and Repor ted podcast)

O t h e r s to r i e s B owl e s re c o u n t s a re

b a s e d o n h e r ow n o n - t h e - g ro u n d re p o r ti ng f ro m t h e f l e et i ng , p o l i c e - f re e C a p i to l

H i l l Au to n o m o u s Zo n e, o r C H A Z , i n w h at h a d b e e n a l i b e ra l b u t n ot ra d i c a l gay n e ig h b o u r h o o d o f S e at t l e, a n d s i m i l a r l o c a l e s el s ew h e re o n t h e U S we s t c o a s t

T h e a n a rch i s t- l e d m i c ro - n e ig h b o u r h o o d s h e ra l d e d a s t h e e n d o f o p p re s s i o n d i d

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exa mp l e, ra c i a l ize d s m a l l - b u s i n e s s

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to s ay s p e n d i ng o n p o l i c e i n t h e i r a re a

s h o u l d b e i n c re a s e d ” B owl e s d e s c r i b e s

a m e et i ng i n O a k l a n d, C a l i f. w h e re t wo

g ro u p s cl a s h e d : “ T h e b l a ck fa m i l i e s s t a r t-

e d g i v i ng u p. ‘ T h e f u ck yo u t a l k i ng a b o u t , ’

o n e m a n s a i d to a p et i te w h i te p e r s o n

wi t h p u r p l e h a i r.’” A p at te r n e m e rge s , o n e

t h at’s wo r t h p ay i ng at te n t i o n to i f yo u a re,

s ay, t r y i ng to m a ke s e n s e o f w hy l ef t- wi ng

p o l i t i c i a n s c a n’ t a lway s t a ke t h e vote s o f

m a rg i n a l ize d c o m m u n i t i e s fo r g ra n te d

T h e u s u a l b o o k- rev i ewe r t h i ng wo u l d b e to s ay t h at t h e p a r

were merely low on the list of social justice priorities Bowles describes agonizing over her “wonder ful synagogue” having a drag-queen-led Tot Shabbat, but then kind of coming around to it She compares the drag queen posing for photos with joyous toddlers on her lap to “Santa,” which one could either take at face value as a comment on children having lighthear ted fun playing with a costume -wearing adult, or as a dig at the synagogue -appropriatenes s, in her view, of the event in question

“We entered an era of apologies,” writes Bowles. “To stay in good standing required relatively frequent apologizing.”

Bowles has writ ten elsewhere about her conversion to Judaism, but in Morning Af ter, Jewishnes s comes up only intermit tently In the months since she finished writing the book, subtext has become text where Jews’ relationship to progres sivism is concerned Jews no, not all Jews, just the vast majorit y of Jews worldwide, the ones with some sor t of pro-Israel sentiment now stand accused of being white supremacist colonizers

Some have responded by asking why Nor th American Jews don’t get “safe spaces ” Others insist upon the impor tance of free speech, even speech ver y critical of Israel Still others are the ones harshly criticizing Israel My point is not that there is just one thing Jews today are saying about the relationship between Jews and post- Oct 7 Nor th American lef t-wing activism, but rather that a Jewish-authored book writ ten about 2023-2024 would almost cer tainly have more of a Jewish angle.

The stor y Bowles is telling, however, centres on a moment where antisemitism

A s the title, The Morning Af ter the Revolution, spells out, Bowle s is documenting a moment from which the world has moved on ( Was the reckoning a “revolution” or is this rhetorical flourish? Hard to s ay ) She argue s that some lef t exce s se s have jus t been normalized, par ticularly in human re source s, and now go unremarked That s aid, she allows that not all of societ y has internalized 2020- s t yle progre s sivism, and conclude s with reference s to newly ascendent phenomena One is the edg y “New Right,” with its embrace of “tradwive s” and “imagined Bronze A ge traditionalism,” rife with sexism and homophobia The other, a lef t whose pro-Hamas bent is similarly unwelcoming to the sor t of woman who would marr y Bari Weis s and conver t to Judaism. It’s enough to make a contrarian Jewish lady nos talgic for 2021era ‘wokene s s . ’

Indeed, contrar y to what I expected of the book, this far from a burn-it-down mocker y of lef t- wing ideals “I owe a lot of my life to political progre s sivism,” write s Bowle s, “and I bris tled at the alternative, which cer tainly wouldn’t want me ” Nor is this a per sonal s tor y about having fallen out with a crowd “I wasn’t canceled,” she write s “Never have been ” But as Bowle s began to que s tion progre s sive or thodoxie s, such as the wisdom of defunding the police, she faced pushback C olleague s warned her that she was on “the wrong side of his tor y ” ( hence the subtitle) and that Weis s, author of How to Fight Anti- Semitism, was a “Nazi ” The se days she is le s s worried what other s will think .

“We entered an era of apologies,” writes Bowles. “This may seem strange to you now, but we all got used to it To stay in good standing required relatively frequent apologizing ” That it did Instagram featured lit tle else. She adds, “It was also notable that these apologies did not help save jobs or stop criticism ”

On t h i s a n d m u ch el s e B owl e s wo u l d get n o a rg u m e n t f ro m Kat h e r i n e

B ro d s k y, w h o c i te s Th e Fre e P re s s s eve ra l

t i m e s a n d m ove s i n s i m i l a r i d e o l og i c a l ( i f

n ot n e c e s s a r i l y s o c i a l ) c i rcl e s No A p o l o -

g i e s i s s i mp l e r i n fo r m at a n d a m b i t i o n s

t h a n M o rn i n g A f te r : a n a r ray o f s h o r t

p ro f i l e s o f c a n c el l e d i n d i v i d u a l s , p e o p l e

o s t ra c ize d i n t h e i r l i te ra r y o r k n i t t i ng o r

a c a d e m i c c o m m u n i t i e s fo r s ay i ng , o r

b e i ng a c cu s e d o f d o i ng , t h e wro ng t h i ng

Un l i ke B owl e s , B ro d s k y h a s a p e r s o n a l

c a n c el l at i o n s to r y a s h e r p o i n t o f d e -

p a r tu re S h e wa s s h u n n e d

a f te r p o s t i ng o n a Fa c eb o o k

n et wo r k i ng p age t h at s h e

t h o ug h t i t wa s f i n e fo r h e r

g ro u p to p ro m ote a j o b o p e ni ng at Fox New s S h e tu r n e d

t h i s ex p e r i e n c e i n to a 2 0 2 1

New swe ek a r t i cl e, Th e R i s e o f R ig h te o u s O n l i n e B u l l i e s , a n d n ow t h i s b o o k Le m o n s

i n to l e m o n a d e a n d a l l t h at

Brodsky’s subjects are mainly established professionals

One exception is a University of British Columbia undergraduate, though even his case (ostracized by classmates for heterodox views) had garnered previous media coverage

The sources of cancellation range from outspokenness about unpopular beliefs (that it is helpful to speak directly to avowed racists as a way of changing their views, or that repor ting is needed on people who transition gender and later regret having done so) to false accusations arguably two separate phenomena, given that one is about free expression, and the other more broadly about justice The chapters end with links to the subject’ professional pages and social media Brodsky is not merely documenting a phenomenon, but an activist of sor ts, helping un-cancel where she can.

profiles Kat Rosenfield among them have that sensibilit y. Brodsk y herself comes acros s as righteous in a defense of free expres sion as she understands it, but not par ticularly amused by the stories she’s telling, nor by the absurdities of lef t-wing exces ses Mainly this is a dif ference in writing st yles, but it’s also that, while both books are from 2024, Brodsk y writes from within the reckoning, while Bowles looks at it with the detachment that comes with a (slight) remove

Jewishnes s figures more prominently here

the United States,” originally from Ukraine, is as much a par t of her own origin stor y as her Facebook mobbing “Like many Jewish families, we fled with just about nothing in the midst of the ongoing Cold War, and even though I was just a child, the les sons of that period lef t a strong imprint on me, especially those related to the chilling effects of silencing and the damage that can be inflicted on groups and individuals in the name of some greater good ”

Brodsk y does not present herself as par tisan, noting, “the intolerant right is no les s of an ‘enemy’ to free speech and unit y than the intolerant lef t ” Like Bowles, she is a disillusioned liberal, but not prepared to join up with the right “I have increasingly found myself as the ‘token liberal’ in conser vative -dominated spaces and have thus been at tacked by both the lef t and the right,” she explains Her book was excerpted in the National Post

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C h at te r to n Wi l l i a m s’s Wro n g t h in k T h e re a re b o o k s , s a l o n s , p u b l i c at i o n s T h i s h o dge p o dge

o f i n te re s t i ng ( a n d l e s s i n te re s t i ng ) t h i n ke r s c o a l e s c e d i n to

i t s ow n i n d u s t r y T h e w h o l e e n te r p r i s e c a n s t a r t to h ave a b e at i ng - a - d e a d - h o r s e fe el, eve n to t h o s e o f u s wi t h i n i t M ay b e i t’s t h at t h e re’s to o m u ch o f a m a r ket fo r ‘ s i l e n c e d ’ i d e a s fo r t h e m to s e e m a s t a b o o a s t h ey h a d O r m ay b e i t’s wa r- wa r m a k i ng cu l tu re wa r s s e e m l i ke s m a l l p ot ato e s

Progres sive hypersensitivit y is an easy target for satire, and Bowles leans into this. Recalling brands’ 2020-era social justice awakening, she writes, “Seventh Generation, which makes my favorite toilet paper, posted : ‘We suppor t defunding the police ’” Brodsk y, however, goes with more of a serious register Some of the people Brodsk y

than in Morning Af ter, with several Jewish subjects highlighting this fact about themselves and its significance to their stories The evolutionar y biologist Bret Weinstein cites his own Jewish background as his reason for speaking up when neces sar y Meteorologist Clif f Mas s tells Brodsk y his outspoken climate change quasi-skepticism is rooted in “tikkun olam.” British musician Winston Marshall pushed back against detractors calling him a “fascist” by pointing out that he is “the progeny of Holocaust sur vivors.”

But the legacy lives on My local Toronto cof fee shop has added pro-Palestinian window displays alongside its pre -existing flyers in suppor t of Black and trans lives

The independent bookstore a block over has done the bookstore equivalent of the same. In context, these are not indicators of an imminent revolution, let alone a completed one, but genteel accompaniments to a street that recently welcomed an upscale womenswear boutique n C o u r t e s y o f K a t h e r i n e B r o d s d k y

Brodsk y’s own biography, that of “a Canadian citizen who has spent a lot of time in

Katherine Brodsky

i

The cottage conquest that helped Jews feel like Canada was home

Bernard Wolf ’s historic cour t battle to win a principled place on the Beach O’Pines

On the August day I visited, a watchful securit y guard presided over the gate at Beach O’Pines, a communit y of cot tages near Grand Bend, Ont Get past him, and gain entr y to an exclusive stretch of beachfront and smat tering of cot tages that’s been coveted for nearly 100 years Ambling over the bridge and into the cris s -cros s of paved roads, even the light seems to sof ten. In place of urban laneways, footpaths run behind rows of cot tages, greener y cascading overhead and under foot. The white sand beaches seem made for building castles Tall, sun-bleached gras ses rustle in the wind.

The area is a mash of old and sprawling new Rus tic cabins share the roads with four-car garage s In one driveway, a vanit y plate on a dus t y Jeep Wrangler reads “Bas s L as s ” Acros s the way, wrought-iron fish swim acros s an ornate gate car ved with an under water scene Spik y seaweed poke s up from the top, deterring uninvited gue s ts At the foot of one water front proper t y, a sign peeks out amid the tree s “ We believe : Black live s mat ter, love is love, feminism is for ever yone, no human being is illegal, science is real Be kind to all ”

Growing up in nearby Grand Bend, Michelle Adelman remembers a dif ferent kind of sign As a child in the ’70s, she spent hours biking along its main drag, which had been a tourist destination for decades At the end of Main Street stood the imposing Lakeview Casino, a dance hall that opened in 1917 In its early years, two all-Black bands played the hall at night, and even Louis Armstrong travelled in to per form But while they were allowed to enter tain, they weren’t allowed to stay: the venue refused to house Black staf fers or enter tainers, and refused to accept Jews as guests By the time Michelle rode by in 1970, the building was in disrepair But the sign hanging on the door had endured all that time, and, as one of the only Jewish children in town, she remembers it even now “It said, ‘No Jews and no dogs,’” says Michelle Back then, signs like those stretched from Grand Bend all acros s the province,

In the early 1900s, a boy named Bernard Wolf was throwing snowballs on a river between his Rus sian village of Volochisk and the Austrian village acros s the water His father had lef t Rus sia for a job in New York, sending money back for his wife and sons ever y month The government wouldn’t allow the boys to leave ; Bernard and his brother, David, were too close to army age and were

refused visas Under the watchful eye of Rus sian sentries, children were allowed to play together on the ice Bernard realized he knew enough German to pas s for an Austrian boy, and he asked the other river boys to help

They skated him acros s to safet y, and from there, he sent for his brother The family reunited in London, Ont , in 1904 By then, his father had followed other Jewish thinkers and writers to the southern Ontario communit y A group of immigrants, incensed from living under Rus sian despotism, embraced communist ideals, even going so far as to move to Washing ton state to tr y commune life. When the commune failed, they moved back to London Although the Wolfs didn’t par take, they were par t of a branch of the freethinking group the Workmen’s Circle, a club that conducted their af fairs in Yiddish and pinned five -dollar bills on the wall of the hall where they met, for immigrants in need

“My father was a radical,” Bernard told The Canadian Jewish News in a 1982 inter view “He was imbued with a new idealism, born of the strug gle against Rus sian t yranny. He and other radically minded immigrants made London a stronghold of Jewish radicalism for two or three decades.”

The group clung tightly to the concept of t zedakah, the act of granting charit y to the needy: the impoverished, the widows, orphans, and strangers among them Bernard revelled in the atmosphere his father created for him and his younger brother, David

Five years af ter they arrived, Bernard and David opened a bespoke and designer women’s dres s shop, one of the first in London In 1932, Bernard became the inaugural president of the newly formed London Jewish Communit y Council

Seven years later, antisemitism would rip through the world like a plague as the Second World War wreaked havoc on the world order, and Hitler ordered the deaths of six million European Jews Acros s the countr y, antisemitic hatred led to store boycot ts, vicious at tacks, and at least one violent riot In London, Jewish leaders advocated for the Canadian government to take in refugees

“None is too many,” responded one government official when asked how many Jews should be accepted The London Club, a social club for busines smen, refused entr y to Jewish profes sionals The Universit y of Western Ontario had an unspoken but firm policy not to hire Jewish facult y.

Bernard’s brother, David, was determined to help, and he and his wife welcomed a young girl seeking a safe haven into their home during the war By 1948, Bernard was a wealthy man Strolling down Dundas St., Ar tistic Ladies Wear and its glamorous window displays were impos sible to mis s And, inside, so was Bernard, out on the floor in the long, narrow shop filled with formal dres ses and urs, as tailors and seamstres ses sewed away downstairs

The brothers had built their for tune bringing ready-made designer fashion to London, Ont , travelling to New York and Paris sourcing textiles and trends “The brothers were par tners David handled more of the busines s logistics, and Bernard was out front, meeting and greeting He was the personalit y,” says his great-nephew Ron Wolf “He was warm-hear ted and really liked people He liked to do good for people, and he liked people to like him ”

In 1929, American resor t developer Frank Salter was boating with friends on Lake Huron when a storm rolled in He sought shelter in Grand Bend and realized its surrounding countr yside was ripe for development Soon af ter, he purchased 5,000 acres that he intended to turn into a luxur y resor t, but his plans were foiled by

Main Street Grand Bend, Ont circa 1935

the impending Great Depres sion Instead, h divided the land into 35 plots and sold them of f as individual parcels to cot tagers, many of whom lived acros s the lake in Michigan.

A few years af ter the war, Bernard’s neighbour, Annie Noble, lost her husband. She began to look for a buyer for a summer home the couple had bought years before, feeling over whelmed by her two proper ties

The Noble cot tage, as it was known, was located in an exclusive, gated communit y called Beach O’Pines, a ten-minute drive from downtown Grand Bend and an hour from London

“Grand Bend is really a perfect getaway.” The couple had no children, Cartwright, and asked him to come

Bernard and his wife, Bessie, were excited at the idea of owning a cottage “London really had two options close to the city: Por t Stanley or Grand Bend,” says Ron Wolf “Grand Bend is really a perfect getaway ” The couple had no children, but they spent Sundays picnicking with their nieces, nephews, and cousins at Springbank Park in London A cottage at Beach O’Pines would give their family somewhere to vacation for generations

“They wanted to have a place in the summer, to be able to get out of the cit y and enjoy a social life,” Ron says Annie invited Bernard to tour the cot tage, and he agreed to buy it for $6,800 Bernard hired his wife’s cousin, a recent law school grad named Ted Richmond, to draw up the of fer for the sale As Richmond prepared the contract, he discovered a clause in the deed that made him incensed

“The lands and premises herein described shall never be sold, as signed, transferred, leased, rented or in any manner whatsoever alienated to, and shall never be occupied or used in any manner whatsoever by any person of the Jewish, Hebrew, Semitic, Negro or coloured race or blood,” it read

The rule was writ ten into the original deeds of sale from the Salter Co in 1933, and because so few of the cot tages at Beach O’Pines had changed hands in the inter vening years, Annie Noble didn’t know that by even having Bernard as a guest at the cot tage, she was in breach. Back then, racial segregation was imposed by private contracts, winks, and nods Richmond called his client He’d spoken to Noble’s lawyer, who had no issue with removing the covenant and wanted to go through with the sale Richmond thought it would be a formality, he assured Bernard, to get it dismissed He’d file the paperwork on behalf of Bernard and Annie straight away

When the Beach O’Pines Protective As sociation (BPPA) , the cot tager group that managed the Beach O’Pines area, heard about the proposed sale, they called an emergency meeting Shor tly af ter, the as sociation of fered Bernard the $6,800 asking price, plus a hef t y profit, to not buy the cot tage They were adamant the restriction be upheld But Bernard didn’t need money, and he was outraged at the cot tagers’ determination not to accept Jews onto their beach When he rejected the of fer, 26 of the as sociation’s 35 members voted to defend the covenant in cour t

To Richmond, the case’s outcome seemed obvious He walked into the Superior Cour t of Justice in Toronto in June 1948 feeling confident For one, there was legal precedent In 1945, an Ontario cour t judge had already ruled that restrictive covenants were illegal. And two, he’d phoned the law yer who’d won that case, John

Car twright, and asked him to come aboard. Car twright was one of the best legal minds in the countr y. Together, they argued for democracy, equalit y, and inclusivit y the right for anyone in Canada to live anywhere they wished But on the bench that day was Justice Walter Schroeder, a judge known for his traditional views Bernard and Annie faced a resounding los s in a judgment that made international news, from Johannesburg to Zurich to London to New York Not only did Justice Schroeder enforce the covenant, he discredited the precedent

“The notion of any danger to public interests involved in the use of restricted covenants seems to me fanciful and unreal,” the judge wrote The Globe and Mail ran an editorial suppor ting the decision When the judge sug gested Wolf buy a cot tage somewhere else, Annie Noble’s law yer, John Car twright, responded : “I have been told he would have to walk a long way along Lake Huron before he could find a place to buy ”

On the spot, Bernard and Annie’s law yers decided to appeal When the Ontario Cour t of Appeal unanimously upheld the decision in 1949, public backlash ensued Jewish leaders denounced the shocking outcome Bernard knew some of the world was with him, and some of the world wasn’t. “He had to fight the bat tle and some of the hate that came with it,” Ron says “It was ver y emotionally wearing on him.” It wore on his wife too. Bes sie was embarras sed by the at tention and beg ged her husband to let it go

Richmond wrote to the Canadian Jewish Congres s for guidance. Neither Annie nor Bernard wanted to continue the fight, which by then had drag ged on for two years. Annie had decided she would only continue to allow the law yers to use her name in the legal bat tle if, in addition to a guarantee that she’d receive the purchase price whether they won or lost, she also received rent and interest from Bernard for the time it took to resolve the case. Bernard, on principle, didn’t want to meet this new slate of demands

“Mr Wolf, personally, would like to wash his hands of the whole mat ter but is willing to leave the final decision up to the Canadian Jewish Congres s,” Richmond wrote to the Congres s in July 1949 With only Bernard’s name on the docket, Richmond and Car twright were cer tain they’d lose The congres s agreed to pay Annie what she was asking so her name could remain on the case The congres s also agreed to fund the entire proceeding, escalating the case to the Supreme Cour t of Canada By then, the fight was

The beach at Grand Bend in 1958

about more than a cot tage, more than a beach as sociation so determined to hold onto its racist values that it would stand behind those values at ever y level of cour t in the countr y

“This came at a time where anti-Semitism wasn’t just rampant, it was par t of Canadian culture,” says former Canadian Jewish Congres s CEO Bernie Farber. “There were limits on how many Jews could study at universities There were bans on Jews on beaches There were clubs that were specifically anti-Semitic. Jews were at tacked in the streets ”

Outside of cour t, public opinion was s tar ting to turn. Ontario Premier Le slie Fros t decided to take a s tand agains t the appeals cour t decision and, in March 1950, pas sed a law declaring res trictive covenants illegal going for ward That didn’t help Bernard, though His law yer s knew, based on the lower cour ts’ re sponse s, that arguing that racial discrimination was contrar y to a civilized societ y likely wasn’t going to work Ins tead, they shif ted their s tance The covenant was unenforceable, they argued, because the language was too vague How Jewish was too Jewish to be excluded? How could you know for sure if someone was Jewish at all? And what would happen if a gentile man married to a Jewish woman bought one of the proper tie s and then died?

in a 2009 inter view “He didn’t want to keep the damn cot tage, so he sold it.” Wolf wanted no par t of a communit y that wanted no par t of him, and he never bought another cot tage for the rest of his life. “Par t of it was the emotional damage caused by the whole event A summer home is something you want in life as a pleasure,” Ron says. “His neighbours didn’t just go to one cour t. They continued their fight on why they should have a right to exclude Jews and people of colour. They were vehement.”

Ins tead, the Wolf s became snowbirds, flying down to Daytona Beach, Fla., ever y year for the winter and frequenting their favourite London re s taurants during the summer, choosing locale s for their kind-hear ted proprietor s over their exper t cuisine Bernard remained a pillar of the Jewish communit y, its defacto leader, for decade s In the 1950s, he was the fir s t Jew appointed by the cit y of London to the Univer sit y of We s tern Ontario’s senate, where he ser ved as a member for nine year s When he and Be s sie celebrated their 70th wedding anniver s ar y, even the Prime Minis ter wrote to congratulate them

Congratulatory telegrams

poured in from across Canada and the U.S. as guests feasted on matzoh ball soup, roasted chicken, and knishes.

Kenneth Morden, the high-powered law yer hired to argue on behalf of the cot tagers, had no answer He claimed that people had the right to as sociate freely with whomever they choose The uncer taint y argument resonated with the seven legal minds adjudicating the case, who, in their writ ten judgment, gingerly sidestepped condemning the covenant’s racism Instead, they determined the language was so unclear that it rendered the contracts unenforceable

The decision came down six-to-one for Bernard and Annie, a clear victor y, which meant the sale of the Noble cot tage could finally go through When Richmond got the call that the cour t had ruled in their favour, he ran down the street from his office and burst through the doors of Ar tistic Ladies Wear, yelling, “We won! We won!”

“It was one of the fir s t time s that a minorit y group won in cour t,” Farber s ays And while the judge s didn’t rule on discrimination specifically, making the decision a tainted one for many who’d worked to see it through, it would set in motion a cascading ef fect that would include the creation of the Ontario Human Rights C ommis sion in 1961

“It s tar ted to move the needle toward a major philosophical change in the countr y,” Ron Wolf s ays And it turned Bernard into a hero A few weeks later, London’s Jewish C ommunit y C ouncil held a dinner in Bernard’s honour Crown Royal was poured out and congratulator y telegrams poured in from acros s C anada and the U S as gue s ts feas ted on mat zoh ball soup, roas ted chicken, and knishe s . Ever yone toas ted to a man who’d become a pillar of the communit y

But Bernard and Bes sie never set foot in the Noble cot tage again Af ter the telegrams and the victor y celebrations quieted, Bernard received an of fer from another Beach O’Pines resident and sold the cot tage “He was a man of principle,” said Alec Richmond, a cousin of Ted Richmond’s and another law yer at the firm,

Today, Beach O’Pines is home to more than 100 cot tages and several Jewish families Michelle Adelman, who remembers the jarring sign on the old Lakeview Casino, owns a cot tage there now “Growing up, my father was the only Jew within a huge radius of this place,” she says “I don’t think he even knew there were any Jews who had cot tages ” He’d be horrified to know that she and her husband bought a cot tage there, years af ter he died.

As a child in Grand Bend, Michelle had spent so much time tr ying to go unnoticed, at tending church and singing in the choir, doing her best to fit into the fabric of the place What at tracted her to Beach O’Pines is that it’s lef t to thrive in its natural state, though, she adds wr yly, the new buildings tend toward the grandiose Still, the stretch of beachfront along Lake Huron has kept its wild, windswept qualit y “It’s beautiful, it’s not manicured,” she says “I liked the idea of us tr ying to live with that rather than cut ting it down and making it something else ”

For Bernard Wolf, the case remained a source of great pride right up until his death in 1987 “Sometimes when you win a case, you look back twent y years later and think it was kind of hollow,” says Ron Wolf “What he won was a permanent change It was the beginning of the end of the abilit y to legally enforce racial or religious discrimination ” The proces s only ser ved to fur ther entrench the values of philanthropy and communit y that his principled greatuncle held dear Acros s southern Ontario, per forming ar ts centres, schools, and scientific research centres bear the Wolf name, largely thanks to Bernard’s nephew, Nor ton

“Nor ton took Bernard’s legacy and expanded it. That sense of being par t of a communit y, showing leadership in a communit y, and giving back to a communit y those were all par ts of our family’s evolution as it went through this,” Ron says “I think the wonder ful thing is, the family didn’t turn away from the communit y af ter that. We wanted to give back ” n

This ar ticle originally appeared in the Winter 2023-24 is sue of Cot tage Life.

Jewish Federations of Canada-UIA (JFC-UIA) mourns the passing of the beloved STANLEY PLOTNICK z”l who served as President of JFC-UIA, President of Montreal Federation CJA, Keren Hayesod (KH) Executive member and Board of Governors representative, and 2012 KH Yakir Award recipient. Stanley was a giant of Jewish communal life in Montreal, across Canada, in Israel and for the global Jewish community We extend our deepest condolences to his wife Barbi, children Laurie (Max Reim), and Philip (Bonnie Zelman), and grandchildren Josh, Erin, Samantha and Matthew May Stanley’s memory be a blessing

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Ariella Rohringer Steven Shulman Sarah Mali Chair, JFC-UIA President & CEO, JFC-UIA Director General, Israel Office

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IWhat horror tropes can teach us about online culture and the politics of Holocaust remembrance

BY MICHAEL FRAIMAN

PHOTOGRAPHS FROM THE SERIES HOLOCAUST DREAM ,

BY DANIEL EHRENWORTH

d o n’ t n e e d to re m i n d a nyo n e t h at

2 0 2 0 wa s a s t ra nge ye a r. S o m e o f t h e

s tu ck- at- h o m e t a ug h t t h e m s el ve s to b a ke

s o u rd o ug h . O t h e r s to o k u p k n i t t i ng . M a ny s p e n t a n ex t ra h o u r p e r we ek wa i t i ng

i n s o c i a l l y - d i s t a n c e d qu e u e s o u t s i d e g ro c e r y s to re s

Me? I wrote a 159-page audio drama script about Holocaust victims rising from mas s graves as zombies

Before you get of fended, let me explain

One month af ter the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, The Canadian Jewish News at least for a time closed up shop But it wasn’t long af ter

the old familiar weekly newspaper shut down that a core group of former employees, myself included, began discus sions about reviving The CJN in a newer, bolder, digital-first format, focusing on deep research and innovative stor ytelling.

I was charged with spearheading the nascent podcast depar tment And since The CJN would take a few months to get back on its feet, and the pandemic ensured I had ample spare time, I did something I hadn’t tried in a decade: creative writing I began with a concept that felt fit tingly eyebrow-raising for The New CJN : Holocaust victims rising as zombies (No, I don’t

The age of zombie discourse

know where the idea came from, or why nobody had come up with it before, really.) The plot, which takes place in the near future, centres on a young Canadian woman, Kat, undergoing a quar ter-life crisis ; she drops out of universit y to travel to Germany and meet her late Jewish father’s estranged family. There, she accompanies her cousins to visit a nearby concentration camp, where news repor ts have alleged graverobbing vandals were dig ging up the mas s graves of Holocaust victims Kat and her cousins are among the first to learn the truth : it isn’t graverobbers disturbing these burial sites, but zombies emerging

out of them Af ter one of the undead seems inexplicably drawn to Kat and her family, they realize he’s docile and curious The group decides to uncover the truth behind the phenomenon and fend of f at tempts by bad-faith outsiders tr ying to manipulate the situation for their own advantage

All this was le s s inspired by George A . Romero’s zombie clas sic Night of the Living Dead than by the online world I witne s sed during the pandemic : the slow devolution of civil discour se throughout the social media age

We live in an era in which confidence is rewarded over accuracy, and the most confident personalities are of ten the most sanctimonious Social media is transfixing, but it’s not just doomscrolling and viral videos that hook people: as the neuroscientist Molly Crocket t has obser ved, reinforcement of moral outrage feeling angr y at perceived injustice, then having a digital mob back you up unleashes dopamine in our brains Social media has transformed outrage into an addiction When people are fed up with being treated unfairly in their offline lives, they feel compelled to vent this frustration

I view my work, essentially, as a sneaky piece of Holocaust education geared specifically to younger audiences.

at any online target that fits their ideolog y: corporations, antifa, COVID, refugees, Jews

In the early days of writing this zombie script, I happened to be working on a freelance project about conspiracy theories surrounding the US S Liber t y, an American ship in the Mediterranean Sea that was accidentally torpedoed by Israel during the Six-Day War I watched a video on the Rus sian news station RT of a ver y angr y tattooed man who fully believed the incident was evidence of “Jewish supremacist Talmudic ideolog y” that somehow coalesced with Holocaust fabrications and tied in with direct Mos sad involvement in 9/11 It helped me imagine my way into how, say, a burgeoning zombie crisis centered around Jews might be spun by righteous lunatics who clung to any rumour they hear online The Holocaust is not nearly as ambiguous as the US S Liber t y, but they’re both old And the older things get, the more flippantly people tend to treat them A leng thy pas sage of time may not be a strict prerequisite for historical revisionism, but it cer tainly helps Combined with rising 21st centur y nationalism, digital echo chambers, and the proliferation of fake news, it’s no coincidence we’re seeing Poland enact

laws criminalizing accusations of Polish complicit y in the Holocaust and anti-vaccine nutcases wearing yellow stars

The problem is not that so many people are outright denying the Holocaust happened ; rather, the established facts are now being distor ted by ideological zealots, knee -jerk contrarian influencers, and straight-up antisemites

All this sows doubt among a generation growing up online, where reputable facts blend with propagandistic fiction I don’t need to inform the readers of this par ticular publication that “a third of students think the Holocaust was exag gerated or fabricated” (CBC News, Januar y 2022) , or that “one in five Canadian youths are not sure what happened in the Holocaust” (CT V News, Januar y 2019)

In re sponse to the se trends, over the las t few year s, C anadian province s have begun mandating Holocaus t education in grade schools It’s a good s tep, but I don’t believe it’s enough Textbooks are fine ; zombie s are cooler

I view my work, es sentially, as a sneak y piece of Holocaust education geared spe -

cifically to younger audiences It falls within a recent tradition of postmodern digital Holocaust content That growing body of work includes @eva.stories, an Instagram account with 1 1 million followers which imagines that the real-life 13-year-old Eva Heyman, who died in Auschwit z, would have been posting had Instagram existed in the 1940s Then there is Inge Ginsberg, a nonagenarian sur vivor who has channeled her trauma into death metal music videos, or the VR headsets at the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which transpor t visitors to Auschwit z in 1944

What began as an idea about Holocaust zombies soon transformed into a script more about warring narratives and historical revisionism A theme emerged : in the absence of victims who cannot speak for themselves, we of ten hear obnoxious people claiming to fight on their behalf

A zombie at tacks one innocent young woman early in the plot, hospitalizing her and galvanizing neo-Nazis acros s Europe

A government agent tracks the zombie by any means neces sar y Religious leaders claim the zombies mark the apocalypse ; a

right-wing activist insists on protecting the sanctit y of the Holocaust victims ; even Kat only gets involved because of an ulterior motive we learn midway through the series. Yet, crucially, nobody asks what the zombies themselves want.

Af ter years of script revisions, we recorded this audio drama in April, with plans to release the full series later this summer (I’m grateful to our par tners who helped get us here, including our co-producers at the Ashkenaz Foundation )

In a post- Oct 7 world, the Holocaust is being co-opted even more than it had been in recent years: by antisemitic conspiracy theorists who claim to be “just asking questions” ; by anti-Israel activists gleefully comparing the Jewish state to Nazi Germany; even by pro-Israel activists invoking “Never Again” to justify par ticularly brutal actions taken by the Israeli government and militar y These types of propagandistic manipulations only reinforce the message I wanted to get across in this script

The six million dead can’t speak for themselve s But if they could, I do wonder what they ’d s ay. n

Daniel Ehrenworth's first book Holocaust Dream, photographed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, was published by the MacLaren Art Centre in conjunction with his 2005 solo exhibition Daniel also works as a commercial photographer and director, find his work at danielehrenworth com

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Nocturnal Noshings

Emily Banks was working for an Israeli e -commerce company and out on the town with friends when she met Alon Steinbach, a native of the Ramat Aviv neighbourhood in Nor th Tel Aviv The pandemic spurred them to move together to her hometown of Toronto While she was looking for a job, and he was waiting for a student visa to be approved, the hungr y couple got into baking late into the evening and decided to find out through online postings if other people wanted fresh cookies delivered to their door The response was enthusiastic enough for them to star t a Midnight Cookie store in the Yonge and Eglinton neighbourhood where 27-year-old Emily grew up ; a second location recently opened near Christie Pits “There are always two reactions,” says Emily “OMG! Hot cookies all night is the best idea ever And do you really have customers until 2 or 3 a m ? ” Now she and 25-year-old Alon get nightly les sons in which flavours are popular af ter dark (Kinder chocolate, primarily, but Amsterdam and Red Velvet too )

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